The Impact of Intergenerational Inheritance on the Scale of Farmland Management in the Context of Aging: Evidence from Eastern China

Abstract

The dilemma of aging and lack of successors must be understood to improve the scale efficiency and competitiveness of China’s agriculture. This paper uses a survey of 1347 farmers in Liaoning, Jiangsu, and Jiangxi and applies tobit and probit models to explore the impact of intergenerational inheritance on farmland management in terms of the current scale and willingness for expansion. The results show that (1) an increased probability of intergenerational inheritance in agriculture can significantly increase the scale of farmland operations, with a greater effect on the current scale than on the willingness to expand; (2) the scale upgrading effect of agricultural intergenerational inheritance is greater in regions with frequent nonagricultural activities and in families with middle or low-scale farmland operations; and (3) the promotion effect on the current scale is greater for elderly farmers 60 years old or above than for farmers who are 40–59 years old, while the promotion effect on the willingness for expansion exists only for the latter. Therefore, policies should attract young, skilled laborers to return to their hometowns for agricultural employment and entrepreneurship and support farmland transfer and scale operation in regions with frequent nonagricultural activities or a lower scale of agricultural operations.

1. Introduction

In recent years, under the dual incentives of continuous reform and the deepening of China’s rural land property rights system and the continuous promotion and implementation of the policy of farmland transfer, new modes of agricultural production, such as professional ranchers, family farms, and professional agricultural cooperatives, have gradually developed [1], but the overall pattern of family-based, small-scale, and fragmented agricultural operations has not changed fundamentally. China’s third agricultural census showed that small farmers in China still accounted for more than 98% of farmers, and the area of arable land operated by smallholders accounted for 70% of the total arable land area, with an average household operating scale of only 0.52 acres; as of 2018, the proportion of farmers operating arable land of less than 0.67 acres was still high at 85.2% [2]. Studies of family farming under the framework of private property rights in Europe and the United States have mostly confirmed that family farming succession planning plays an important role in determining the scale of farmland operated by family farms [3,4,5,6]. As a large agricultural country where the concept of intergenerational inheritance is deeply rooted in farmers’ awareness, China has a significantly different land property rights system and agricultural policy from Western countries, and agricultural intergenerational inheritance in China has different connotations and characteristics [1]. The link between agricultural intergenerational inheritance and farmland use in China has already been found to be nonnegligible [7]. Especially in the current context, where Chinese society has formally become a moderate aging society and the future population will still present fewer children and accelerated aging [8], the problem of intergenerational inheritance of Chinese agriculture will gradually become prominent, and there is an urgent need to explore its relationship with land use.

Stable and effective intergenerational inheritance is important for maintaining and developing family agriculture. Intrafamily inheritance is a common form of intergenerational inheritance of family farming in China because of its many advantages, such as low cost, maintaining the familial nature and internal stability of agricultural management, and leveraging the positive demonstration role of parents to children [9,10]. However, driven by the low profitability of agricultural operations and long-established norms that attribute farmers low status, lead parents to persuade their children to leave farming, and reduce children’s interest in farming, the nonfarm transfer of labor has become a common phenomenon in rural China [1,11,12]. China’s “old-age agriculture” thus faces the dilemma of a lack of successors within the family. For this reason, in recent years, the Chinese government has attached great importance to cultivating high-quality farmers as the “agricultural heirs” of the new era, and the “No. 1 Document” of the central government has repeatedly expressed the aim to guide the return of high-quality labor to rural areas and has described agriculture as a fundamental and long-term project to develop modern agriculture and realize rural revitalization. In this context, exploring the impact of intergenerational inheritance of family farming on the scale of farmland operations is significant not only for maintaining the sustainable development of family farming and guaranteeing the stability of Chinese agriculture, but also for effectively organizing smallholders into the development track of modern agriculture, scientifically and steadily promoting the modernization of agriculture with Chinese characteristics, and realizing the comprehensive revitalization of rural China.

Based on this, this study incorporates intergenerational inheritance factors into the analytical framework of farmland operation scale decisions, focuses on the interaction and coordination between the probability of intergenerational inheritance and farmland operation scale, and re-examines the micro mechanisms of farmland operation scale decisions. The marginal contributions and practical implications of this study are as follows: first, it explores the agricultural inheritance problem and its relationship with the scale of farmland operations from the context of aging. This expands the scope of research on the effects of aging and helps answer the practical questions of who will farm the land after the current generation of farmers and how rural farming culture in China can be continued. Second, it focuses on the impact of intergenerational inheritance on the adjustment of family farming operation scale, clarifies its inner mechanism, and empirically analyzes the impact using farmer survey data from three representative eastern provinces of China, namely, Liaoning, Jiangsu, and Jiangxi, which enriches the empirical research on the effects of intergenerational inheritance of agriculture and supports the promotion of agricultural scale operations and the effective linkage between smallholder farmers and agricultural modernization in China. Moreover, it offers empirical evidence from a transition country for exploring the relationship between intergenerational agricultural inheritance and land resource use.

2. Literature Review and Theoretical Analysis

2.1. Literature Review

According to statistics, more than 98% of agricultural production worldwide is based on households, with the highest proportion of family-based agricultural operations in Asia [13]. Smallholder-based family farming is still the prevalent form of agriculture and will persist for a long time in China, which is one of the Asian countries with the most widespread family farming [1,14]. Traditional theory suggests that the sustainability of family farming is strongly reliant on intergenerational inheritance. The existing discussion on the concept of intergenerational inheritance in agriculture is mainly based on family farms, and it is unanimously agreed that intergenerational inheritance in family farms refers to the act of current farm owners or operators transferring ownership and management rights of family farms or agriculture to others. Firstly, it may be caused by farmers being unable to continue operating the farm due to age or health reasons, or by poor farm management and low economic efficiency [9]. Secondly, as the potential inheritors can arise based on family and kinship relationships, or other entities outside of family relationships, intergenerational inheritance of family farms includes family inheritance and nonfamily inheritance [9,15]. Thirdly, intergenerational inheritance includes the intergenerational transmission and replacement of tangible resources such as land, labor, and agricultural production resources, as well as the transmission of intangible resources such as knowledge and skills, concepts and habits, and social capital [1,9]. Finally, the intergenerational inheritance of family farms is a long-term, multi-dimensional, and multi-stage process [16], which typically takes years or decades to complete, with significant risks and uncertainties [17].

Since intrafamily inheritance has many advantages, such as being low cost, facilitating the smooth transition of farm management and promoting paternal retirement [10,18], and internal inheritance, is a widely adopted pattern of family agricultural inheritance in China. The intergenerational inheritance of family agricultural operations referred to in this study is mainly limited to intrafamily inheritance, and the intergenerational inheritance of family agricultural management is defined as the inheritance of agricultural production and management based on family relationships and kinship between two generations. This study examines the possibility of family agricultural management being inherited from the perspective of offspring, without considering the issues of multiple inheritance in the case of many children; the latter leads to the fragmentation and scale reduction of farmland and is examined by Suess-Reyes and Fuetsch [19] and Burton and Walford [20].

Scholars have extensively explored the topics of intergenerational inheritance in family agriculture and deeply analyzed the relationship between intergenerational inheritance and farm management strategies by taking family farms under the framework of private property rights in Europe and the United States as examples. Such studies have found that family farm succession planning has three major effects on farm management. First, there is a “retirement effect” in the case of a lack of a successor [6], i.e., when the successor is uncertain, family farming-related skills, values, and assets cannot be transmitted [21], and families are unlikely to adopt risky investment and production decisions that threaten financial stability or increase the work burden [22]. They tend to manage the farm statically, for example, not investing in land or even divesting or retiring from the farm by selling land or assets to reduce the work time and burden [5,6,23]. Second is the “succession effect”, in which the determined successor stimulates the farmer to improve and innovate the farm structure and production [6]. An explicit successor can increase the farm’s borrowing capacity [24,25] and stimulate the adoption of farm expansion strategies [23,26], such as horizontal expansion by purchasing or leasing more land and expanding existing production, vertical development by enhancing existing production, developing new farm activities, or expanding businesses aimed at increasing production and income from existing land, or an overlap of horizontal and vertical strategies [5]. The third is the “successor effect”, in which new technologies and innovations are introduced into the farm business after succession [6].

From a review of the relationship between intergenerational inheritance and farm management, it is clear that land operation scale adjustment is an important strategy for farmers to cope with internal succession uncertainty. The lack of a successor often brings about land operation scale reduction through land abandonment and sale (rental), while the presence of an explicit successor can stimulate land factor input and operational land area increase [3,4,5,6]. With China’s booming nonfarm economy, labor migration to cities, and limited household labor, older farmers are facing choices about how to use their farmland [7]. In hilly or mountainous areas where the natural conditions of agricultural production are poor and the arable land is more barren, farmland abandonment when there is a lack of heirs is common [27,28]. In recent years, the property rights of farmland in China have been gradually clarified, standardized, and institutionalized, the farmland market has developed rapidly, the agricultural management system has been innovated, and elderly farmers without explicit successors have various disposal options regarding farmland use rights, such as renting and handing over the land to the cooperative for unified management [7]. For this reason, numerous scholars have tested the link between population aging and the development of farmland markets in China [29,30,31]. In addition, considering that intergenerational inheritance is a logical necessity and an important stage of the family life cycle, Su et al. [32], Liu et al. [33], Lin et al. [34], Zhu et al. [35], and Liang et al. [36] focus on the family life cycle, consider differences in population size, structural changes, and employment preferences, and dissect the relationship between the family life cycle and the scale of farmland management.

The current studies support a deep understanding of the interaction between intergenerational inheritance and farmland management and provide valuable clues for this study; however, there are still certain aspects to be improved. First, existing research focuses on the intergenerational inheritance of family farms under the private property rights system in Europe and the United States. However, studies have not empirically or theoretically analyzed the relationship between the intergenerational inheritance of family agriculture and the use of farmland under the arrangement of public ownership of land. Second, the findings of studies on the impact of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of family farms are mostly obtained by simple descriptions and comparisons of small samples or case studies, while the relevant econometric tests conducted in China are limited to the perspective of aging and the family life cycle. Although the classification of farm households based on the likelihood of inheritance and the comparison of their land use behaviors can offer a preliminary judgment of the relationship between the two, the small samples and the lack of rigorous econometric tests greatly weaken the generalizability of the findings. Even though case study analysis can reveal the inner mechanism of the relationship between the two in depth, it may have limited external and internal validity and insufficient reliability. In addition, the econometric examination of farmland market development from the perspective of aging in China overlooks the key role of children’s agricultural inheritance in mitigating the impact of aging on the scale of farmland operations, and analysis from the household life cycle perspective fails to specifically identify the role of children’s agricultural inheritance in determining the farmland scale of household operations. For this reason, it is necessary to design appropriate agricultural intergenerational inheritance variables to more specifically reveal their effects on the scale of farmland operated by the family.

2.2. Theoretical Analysis

Based on the previous analysis, this study concludes that the moderating effect of the probability of intergenerational inheritance in family farming on the scale of farmland operations in the context of population aging is mainly manifested as follows: first, there is the “retirement effect”, in which farmers reduce the scale of farmland operated by the family in the case of a lack of successors. Second, there is the “succession effect”, in which the presence of an explicit successor motivates current farmers to expand the scale of farmland; this effect can be expanded to include the “investment recovery guarantee effect” and the “far-sightedness effect” in China. The following section will analyze these key effects (see Figure 1 for details).

2.2.1. Retirement Effect

Chinese family agriculture mainly relies on intrahousehold labor for production activities and succession continuity. On the one hand, the lack of inheritors means that the family’s reserve labor force is insufficient. Under the dual constraints of a limited and gradually aging labor force within the family, the slow development of the external agricultural labor market, and the high cost of hiring labor supervision, it would be the most rational choice for farmers to maintain or even to reduce the scale of operating farmland in the form of renting out to reduce the family’s agricultural production workload and demand for labor. On the other hand, the lack of successors also means that when farmers grow older and cannot cope with agricultural production, they cannot find people within the household to transfer the agricultural assets and value at the right time, which reduces their investment incentives and makes them unlikely to expand their farmland scale. More critically, in this context, agricultural assets cannot be transferred through low-cost intrafamily transfer but must be transferred through nonfamily transfer, which has a high sunk cost [9]. Rational farmers will thus maintain or even reduce the land scale of operations to reduce losses. Notably, compared with younger people, older farmers’ ability and willingness to invest in agriculture are greatly reduced due to the physical limitations of aging; the weakening of human capital, such as literacy, open-mindedness, or the ability to accept new things; and the resulting sharp decline in financing ability and risk appetite. This leads to more prominent scale reduction and even agricultural exit in the face of a lack of successors. The “retirement effect” is thus generated.

2.2.2. Investment Recovery Guarantee Effect

When there is an explicit successor in family farming or a high probability of internal succession in the future, investment and related income in family farming can be safely recovered by the investor or his successor at present or in the future. This stimulates the family to expand the scale of farmland management and increase related investment. Agricultural production is inseparable from large amounts of land resources and a series of investments. In rural China, farmland is evenly distributed according to the family population. Therefore, land leasing is an important means for farmers to obtain more farmland resources for agricultural production and has developed rapidly in recent years, benefiting from the central government’s policy guidance and support. Leases tend to be long-term, and the payment form of rent has gradually come to be a one-time payment of multiple years or all the years rented in China [9]. This means that the land factor inputs in production are beginning to take on a long-term nature and have the character of investment. The identification of a successor means that a low-cost internal transfer can be achieved within the family at any time and guarantees that the farmland and related investments can be safely recovered in the future, thus motivating farmers to expand the current scale of land operation. In rural China, elderly individuals mainly rely on family pensions (especially sons). Therefore, even if the original investor is not the recipient of the investment and its income, the child’s access to the father’s land investment and its income can enhance economic capacity and meet the multifaceted financial needs of the father’s pensions, i.e., the father can still enjoy the benefits of investment. This is called “intergenerational rewards” or “intergenerational gains”, and the incentive effect of investment may still be generated.

2.2.3. Far-Sightedness Effect

Driven by traditional ideas such as “paternalism” and “altruism” [37], the horizontal expansion effect of Chinese family farming generated by the “succession effect” is mainly derived from three aspects. First, in the case of explicit heirs, although inheritance will occur in the distant future, the parents may expand the current scale of family farming to achieve economies of scale and increase the income obtained by their offspring after they inherit the farm. Second, large-scale family farming entails a large amount of wealth, including land and land property rights, buildings, machinery and equipment, and other facilities, as well as agriculture knowledge and human capital related to family farming, and all of these can be passed on from one generation to the next in a way similar to the intergenerational inheritance of wealth, which is considered a unique way to accumulate wealth in China [10,35]. To enhance the assets and wealth of the offspring when they inherit agricultural assets, the parents may try to accumulate resources or assets a few years or decades before the inheritance occurs. Especially in the context of the reform of China’s rural land property rights system, which continues to strengthen the endowment effect of land resources, the value of farmland and its price is gradually increasing [38,39,40], and the “accumulation effect” of farmland resources is highlighted. Third, considering that the offspring will continue to rely on agriculture and farmland to survive in the future when their nonfarm employment opportunities and nonfarm wages decrease due to aging, parents may maintain the current scale of farmland management or even expand.

In conclusion, the “retirement effect” caused by the uncertainty of intergenerational inheritance reduces the farmland operation scale of farmers, while the “investment recovery guarantee effect” and “far-sightedness effect” caused by an explicit successor can encourage families to expand the area of management farmland, so it can be expected that the increase in the probability of intergenerational inheritance will promote the farmland operation scale of family agriculture

3. Data, Variable Selection, and Model Setting

3.1. Data

The data were obtained from field research conducted in 2019 in the representative provinces of Liaoning, Jiangsu, and Jiangxi in East China. Liaoning, Jiangsu, and Jiangxi Provinces, located in northeastern, central-eastern, and southeastern regions of China (see Figure 2), respectively, have representativeness in terms of farmland resource endowment, aging population, and development of farmland scale management. The research sample selection was mainly determined by multistage sampling. First, based on the geographical location, distance from the provincial capital city, and economic development level, the survey selected six representative counties, namely, Sujiatun, Donggang, Guanyun, Jinhu, Fengcheng, and Suichuan. Second, five townships were selected in each county by systematic random sampling based on the ranking of land endowment in each county, and then four sample villages were identified in each township based on the ranking of village farmland in each township by a similar method. Finally, 12 farming households were randomly selected in each village. Through interviews and structured questionnaires, the survey sample covered 6 counties, 30 townships, and 120 villages in Liaoning, Jiangsu, and Jiangxi Provinces, and a total of 1420 effective questionnaires were obtained from farming households. Considering the theme of this study and the legal marriage age (aged 22 and above for males and 20 and above for females) and labor force age (aged 16 and above) in China, married farmers who had children aged 16 and above to inherit agriculture had to be at least 40 years old (male) or 38 years old (female). Therefore, after eliminating samples missing key information, 1347 valid samples whose household heads were 40 years old or older were finally selected for empirical research. Among them, 459 were from Liaoning, 457 were from Jiangsu, and 431 were from Jiangxi.

3.2. Variable

3.2.1. Dependent Variables

According to the literature, the positive impact of intrafamily succession planning on farm management occurs well before succession occurs (e.g., 10 years before). In other words, an explicit successor may be significantly associated with either current or future management of the farm [4,26]. For this reason, the explained variables in this study include both the current scale of farmland managed by households and the willingness to expand the existing scale of farmland, characterized by “the area of farmland operated by the family in 2018” and “whether or not the family will expand the scale of the current farmland operation”, respectively, with the aim of identifying both the changes in the current scale and the further increase in the scale of the farmland operated by family due to intergenerational inheritance.

3.2.2. Key Explanatory Variables

The core explanatory variable is the probability of intergenerational inheritance in agriculture. Notably, due to the absence of such a variable in the questionnaire, this study uses the participation of male offspring in agricultural production as a proxy variable for the probability of intergenerational inheritance in agriculture, and the probability of inheritance of family agriculture is portrayed by the “number of male offspring participating in agriculture”, for the following reasons. First, the participation of offspring in agricultural activities is an important way for them to accumulate production experience and a key stage of their agricultural inheritance [16,41] and can well reflect the probability of family agriculture being inherited in the future. Second, due to the influence of the long-standing patrilineal inheritance model, it is common for male offspring to inherit the family farm and land from their parents in rural China. Therefore, this study uses the number of male offspring participating in agricultural activities to portray the probability of inheritance of family farming, which can well fit the actual situation in China.

3.2.3. Control Variables

Referring to existing studies [35,36,39,42] and taking the actual situation in the study area into account, the control variables mainly cover three aspects: household characteristics, village characteristics, and regional characteristics. The meanings and statistical characteristics of each variable are shown in

Table 1. Variable definition and statistical description.

Variable	Variable Definition	Mean	S.D.
Current scale of farmland operated by the family	Area of farmland operated by households in 2018, hm2 (taken as logarithm)	0.714	0.886
Willingness to expand the existing scale of farmland	Whether the farmer wants to expand the existing scale of farmland operated by the family: 1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.244	0.430
Probability of intergenerational inheritance in agriculture	Number of male offspring involved in family agricultural activities, persons	0.086	0.296
Age	Age of head of household, years	60.116	9.277
Health	The health status of the head of household: 1 = very bad; 2 = somewhat bad; 3 = fair; 4 = better; 5 = very good	3.659	1.172
Training participation	Whether the household head has participated in training or technical education about agriculture: 1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.331	0.471
Party members	Whether any member of the family is a member of the Communist Party: 1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.231	0.422
Village cadres	Whether any member of the family is a village cadre: 1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.100	0.300
Agricultural machinery value	Total value of family agricultural machinery at the end of 2017, yuan CNY (taken as logarithm)	3.805	4.676
Value of other fixed assets	Total value of family assets other than agricultural machinery at the end of 2017, yuan CNY (taken as logarithm)	11.877	1.690
Deposits	Amount of savings held by the household at the end of 2017, yuan CNY (taken as logarithm)	4.776	5.281
Contracted land area	Family contracted land area, hm2 (taken as logarithm)	0.419	0.219
Number of laborers	Number of laborers 16 years old and above in the family, persons	3.364	1.354
Share of nonfarm labor force	The proportion of family laborers who have worked in nonagricultural areas for more than 6 months in a year, %	0.230	0.261
New pension insurance participation	Number of family members who have participated in the new pension insurance, persons	1.914	1.460
Land transfer policy understanding	Whether farmers know the policies related to farmland transfer: 1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.436	0.496
Land titling	Whether the family contracted land has been registered during the new round of rural land property rights registration in China: 1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.780	0.414
Land adjustment experience	Whether the family contracted land has been readjusted from the beginning of the second round of land contracting to 2018: 1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.243	0.429
Risk appetite	Based on farmers’ agreement with the designed risk appetite questions, a total risk appetite score is assigned and summed	11.928	3.931
Village arable land area	Total arable land area in the village, hm2 (taken as logarithm)	5.440	0.688
Soil	Main soil texture of village land: 1 = sand; 2 = sandy loam; 3 = light loam; 4 = medium loam; 5 = clay loam	4.021	1.476
Traffic	Type of main road from the village to the nearest village fair: 1 = tar road; 2 = concrete road; 3 = dirt and gravel road	1.532	0.517
Bank branches	Number of village bank outlets, pcs	0.350	0.706
Land transfer information	Does the village provide land transfer information to farmers: 1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.738	0.440
Scale operation subsidies	Subsidies are provided to farmers engaged in large-scale land management: 1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.295	0.456
Performance assessment	Was the scale of farmland management included in the government performance evaluation system in 2017: 1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.267	0.443
Liaoning	1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.341	0.474
Jiangsu	1 = Yes; 0 = No	0.339	0.474

Note: The questionnaire was designed with three questions to test risk appetite in the positive direction, such as “I would make decisions without considering its consequences”, and two questions to test risk appetite in the negative direction, such as “I would avoid getting involved in things where the consequences are uncertain”. For each question, “completely disagree”, “slightly disagree”, “uncertain”, “relatively agree”, and “completely agree” were set. For the positive risk preference test questions, the values of “1”, “2”, “3”, “4”, and “5” were assigned in order, and “5”, “4”, “3”, “2”, and “1” were assigned for the reverse risk appetite test. Finally, the total scores of the farmers’ five questions were summed to obtain the farmers’ risk preference scores.

. Considering that some of the control variables, such as the value of household agricultural machinery, the value of other fixed assets, deposits, and whether the scale of land managed is linked to performance assessment, may be endogenous, this study instead used the values for the previous year (2017) for regression.

3.3. Model

A model was generated to examine whether changes in the probability of intergenerational inheritance can provide an effective explanation for adjustment of the scale of farmland operated by farmers. The specific model is as follows:

$$LandScal{e}_i=\alpha +\beta Successio{n}_i+\gamma X_i+{\epsilon }_i$$

In the equation, LandScale_i refers to the scale of farmland operated by household i, including the current scale of farmland operated by the family and the willingness to expand the existing scale of farmland in the future; Succession_i is the core explanatory variable; X_i represents a series of control variables, including household characteristics variables, village-level characteristics variables, and province dummy variables; $\alpha$ is a constant term; $\beta$ and $\gamma$ are model coefficients to be estimated and ε_i is the residual term. The explanatory variable “the current scale of farmland operated by the family” is a truncated variable that includes zero values, so the tobit model is selected for estimation; the explanatory variable “the willingness to expand the existing scale of farmland” is a binary variable, so the probit model is used for estimation.

4. Empirical Results

4.1. Baseline Regression Results

Table 2. Estimation results of the effect of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by the family.

Variable	Current Farmland Scale		Willingness to Expand Farmland Scale
	Coefficient	T Value	Coefficient	Z Value
Probability of intergenerational inheritance in agriculture	0.724 ***	5.775	0.359 ***	2.945
Household Characteristics
Age	−0.025 ***	−4.242	−0.039 ***	−7.446
Health	0.145 ***	3.513	0.093 **	2.156
Training participation	0.363 ***	3.922	0.290 ***	3.428
Party members	−0.264 **	−2.233	−0.221 **	−2.034
Village cadres	−0.236	−1.372	−0.208	−1.380
Agricultural machinery value	0.201 ***	15.784	0.066 ***	6.666
Value of other fixed assets	0.045	1.472	0.035	1.067
Deposits	−0.016 *	−1.941	−0.015 **	−2.063
Contracted land area	0.481 ***	5.643	−0.101	−1.180
Number of laborers	0.130 ***	3.507	0.067 *	1.687
Share of nonfarm labor force	−1.069 ***	−5.668	−0.313 *	−1.683
New pension insurance participation	0.045	1.307	0.032	0.908
Land transfer policy understanding	0.175 **	2.062	−0.001	−0.010
Land titling	0.117	1.157	0.151	1.424
Land adjustment experience	0.210 **	2.026	0.029	0.261
Risk appetite	0.015	1.361	0.059 ***	4.960
Village Characteristics
Village arable land area	−0.169 **	−2.041	−0.117	−1.312
Soil	−0.027	−0.842	0.013	0.416
Traffic	0.319 **	2.201	0.091	0.640
Bank branches	0.075	1.137	−0.104	−1.317
Land transfer information	0.129	1.329	0.114	0.129
Scale operation subsidies	−0.005	−0.052	−0.147	−1.125
Performance assessment	−0.221 **	−2.056	−0.233 **	−1.982
Province
Liaoning	0.767 ***	4.300	0.269	1.410
Jiangsu	−0.249	−1.617	0.337 *	1.881
Constant term	0.740	0.811	0.283	0.326
Sigma_cons	1.466 ***	28.838	—
F value	39.42		—
Chi-square test values (Wald chi-square values)	—		340.86
Significance (Prob > F or Prob > Chi2)	0.000		0.000
Pseudo R2	0.153		0.198
Sample size	1347		1347

Note: (1) *, **, and *** denote significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively; (2) T values and Z values are clustered robust standard errors; (3) The model passes the multiple cointegration test. Same as below.

shows the results of the tobit and probit model estimation for the scale of farmland operated by households in 2018 and the willingness to expand the scale of farmland in the future. Considering the possible correlation between samples in the same village, the model estimation is corrected by a robust standard error. Both equations are significant at the 1% level, indicating the high fitting degree of the models.

4.1.1. Impact of the Probability of Intergenerational Inheritance in Agriculture

The results show that the coefficients of the probability of intergenerational inheritance variable are significant at the 1% level and positive in both equations, indicating that with an increase in the probability of intergenerational inheritance, the probability of farmers operating on a larger scale or expanding the farmland scale in the future increases. This is consistent with theoretical expectations and the findings of Wheeler et al. [4], Inwood and Sharp [5], and Potter and Lobley [6]. In addition, it is worth noting that the regression coefficient of the probability of intergenerational inheritance variable in the equation including the current scale of farmland operated by the family is 0.724, which is significantly larger than the regression coefficient of 0.359 for the equation including the willingness to expand the scale of farmland in the future. This suggests that the probability of intergenerational inheritance not only stimulates households to expand their farmland, but this stimulus effect is more significant in the current period than in future expectations. The possible explanation for this is that the “scale-up effect” of agricultural inheritance emerges years or decades before the inheritance occurs, and there is less room for the increase in scale after it reaches a certain level due to the limited labor force and operating capacity of households, i.e., the “scale-up effect” of agricultural inheritance gradually weakens over time after the scale of farmland operated by family reaches a certain level.

4.1.2. Effect of Control Variables

The empirical results of the control variables show that age negatively affects the scale of farmers’ land management, while the health of household heads and participation in agricultural training positively affect the scale of management. Party members have the advantage of information acquisition and, as people with higher knowledge and understanding, can more fully understand policies, and they are more likely to rely on new policies to operate farmland in a nonhousehold mode, such as trusteeship and transferring, which reduces the scale of farmland operated by the family. Agricultural mechanization simplifies agricultural production procedures and reduces the demand for labor, which significantly contributes to the increase in the scale of farmland operations. The more deposits farmers have, the lower their demand to obtain higher income through agriculture, which negatively and significantly affects the scale of farmland operated by the family. The larger the contracted land area is, the greater the area of farmland that can be operated by the household, which positively affects the current scale of farmland operated by the family; however, a larger area of contracted land also implies a lower demand and the possibility of further expansion of the family farmland scale, although the coefficient is insignificant. The number of laborers positively and significantly affects the scale of farmland; the increase in the proportion of nonfarm laborers reduces the probability that households expand the scale of farmland and negatively and significantly affects the scale of farmland operated by the family. An understanding of land transfer policy promotes large-scale land management. The experience of land adjustment positively and significantly contributes to the current scale of farmland operated by farmers, i.e., farmland adjustment may lead to an increase or reduction in the area of household contracted land; families whose farmland area has been reduced through land adjustment may realize the importance of farmland and express the demand for more land through farmland transfer. As further expansion of the existing scale of farmland operated by family requires a series of investments, which has significant risks, risk preference positively and significantly affects the willingness for scale expansion.

For the village characteristics, the more abundant village arable land resources are, the easier it is to attract enterprises to rent village arable land, thus reducing the area of farmland operated by the family. The worse the village transportation situation is, the less convenient it is for farmers to travel and obtain off-farm jobs, which promotes farm employment. If the scale of farmland operated by households is considered in performance appraisals, the government and village cadres tend to introduce outside enterprises to lease village land to improve their performance, which reduces the area of farmland operated by households. Agriculture plays an important role in Liaoning Province, and the large-scale management of farmland has developed rapidly. However, the dummy variable of Jiangsu Province does not have a significant effect on the current operation scale of farmland but significantly and positively promotes the expected scale expansion, which may be related to the development of land share cooperatives in Jiangsu Province. Due to the centralized management of village land, the current area of farmland managed by farmers is relatively small. Farmers hope to expand the area of farmland operated by their families to increase income.

4.2. Endogeneity Discussion

When identifying the relationship between the probability of intergenerational inheritance and the scale of farmland management, special attention should be given to the endogeneity that may arise from the mutual causality between the two. Theoretically, family agriculture with a larger operating scale is more likely to attract the younger generation’s interest in inheritance based on the following reasons: (1) family agriculture with a larger operating scale has a higher capital stock, can achieve economies of scale, and can generate high income; (2) a larger land area can support the simultaneous employment of two generations in agriculture and achieve low-cost family internal inheritance; and (3) a larger land area offers more possibilities for making plans. Many empirical studies have confirmed the positive effect of farm size on the likelihood of inheritance [43,44,45,46]. Therefore, this study conducted a Hausman test for the endogeneity of the intergenerational inheritance likelihood variable “number of male offspring involved in farming”. The results of the test showed that the p value was 0.7596 for the equation regarding the current scale of farmland operated by the family and 0.5675 for the equation regarding the willingness to expand the existing scale of farmland, which were not significant. This means that the original hypothesis that all explanatory variables are exogenous could not be rejected. However, since the traditional Hausman test does not hold in the case of heteroskedasticity, the DWH test for heteroskedasticity was further conducted in this study, and the p values of the DWH test were not significant. Therefore, it can be concluded that there is no endogeneity in the variable of the probability of intergenerational inheritance in this study.

4.3. Robustness Tests

4.3.1. Replacement of Core Explanatory Variables

The number of family offspring, especially the number or proportion of male laborers among the offspring, is an important determinant of the likelihood of family agricultural inheritance [36,41,45,46], which can better reflect the probability of agriculture being inherited. In addition, referring to the study of Lu et al. [47], children’s residence in the household is a feasible proxy variable for their agricultural part-time employment. Therefore, in this study, the regressions were conducted using the “number of male offspring” and “number of male offspring living at home” instead of the core explanatory variables to test the robustness of the results. The estimated results (see

Table 3. Estimated results of the effect of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by the family (replacing the core explanatory variables).

Variable	Current Farmland Scale		Willingness to Expand Farmland Scale
Number of male offspring	0.424 *** (4.104)	—	0.196 ** (2.014)	—
Number of male offspring living at home	—	0.242 *** (3.072)	—	0.225 *** (2.668)
Control variable	YES	YES	YES	YES
Constant term	0.630 (0.693)	0.226 (0.248)	0.238 (0.279)	0.027 (0.031)
Sigma_cons	1.472 *** (28.068)	1.501 *** (29.057)	—	—
F value	37.08	36.00	—	—
Chi-square test values (Wald chi-square values)	—	—	337.16	334.34
Prob > F or Prob > Chi2	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000
Pseudo R2	0.152	0.142	0.197	0.196
Sample size	1347	1347	1347	1347

Note: (1) **, and *** denote significance at the 5%, and 1% levels, respectively; (2) The control variables and their impact results are consistent with Table 2 and are not reported or explained in detail here; (3) Clustered robust standard errors are in parentheses. Same below.

) show that the regression coefficients of “number of male offspring“ and “number of male offspring living at home“ are positively significant, and the regression coefficients in the equation regarding the current scale of farmland are larger than those in the equation regarding the expected scale expansion, which is consistent with the baseline regression results.

4.3.2. Dependent Variable Substitution

The transfer of land is an important path to expand or reduce the scale of farmland operated by families under the system of equalization of farmland in rural China. Referring to the study of Li et al. [48], this study uses the regressions of whether farmers transfer farmland and the scale of farmland transferred in (in logarithm) instead of the current scale of farmland operated by the family to test the robustness, and the results are shown in

Table 4. Estimated results of the effect of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by the family (replacing the dependent variable).

Variable	Whether to Transfer In	Transfer Scale	Whether to Transfer In	Transfer Scale	Whether to Transfer In	Transfer Scale
Number of male offspring involved in agriculture	0.541 *** (3.489)	1.553 *** (5.357)	—	—	—	—
Number of male offspring living at home	—	—	0.223 *** (2.886)	0.582 *** (3.166)	—	—
Number of male offspring	—	—	—	—	0.342 *** (3.403)	0.791 *** (3.189)
Control variable	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES	YES
Constant term	1.523 ** (1.962)	0.096 (0.053)	1.143 (1.504)	−1.213 (−0.654)	1.457 * (1.859)	−0.396 (−0.214)
Sigma_cons	—	2.865 *** (33.768)	—	2.936 *** (32.780)	—	2.885 *** (32.333)
F value	—	32.20	—	30.22	—	32.40
Chi-square test values (Wald chi-square values)	372.17	—	350.77	—	367.65	—
Prob > F or Prob > Chi2	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000
Pseudo R2	0.230	0.149	0.218	0.139	0.229	0.146
Sample size	1347	1347	1347	1347	1347	1347

Note: (1) *, **, and *** denote significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively; (2) Probit and tobit were used to evaluate whether farmers have transferred in farmland and the area of farmland transferred in, respectively.

. The probability of intergenerational inheritance has a positive and significant impact on land transfer. This proves that even when replacing the dependent variables, the effect of the probability of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by the family remains significant.

4.4. Heterogeneity Analysis

Differences in the level of nonfarm industry development [49], population aging, and farmland large-scale operation [50] affect the “scale-up effect” of intergenerational inheritance. To more deeply explore these variables, this study further examines heterogeneity in two dimensions: regional differences in nonfarm employment and differences in the distribution of farm household age and scale.

4.4.1. Regional Differences in Nonfarm Employment Levels

The incentive effects of the probability of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of household farmland operations are likely to be significantly different in regions with different levels of nonfarm industry development and employment, where farmers’ dependence on farmland and the level of farmland market development differ significantly. For this reason, this study introduces the cross variables of regional nonfarm employment level and the probability of intergenerational inheritance to test the above regional differences. The results show that the cross term has a significant effect on the current scale of farmland operated by the family. This proves that regional nonfarm employment promotes the size of farmland operated by farmers who have an explicit agricultural successor (see

Table 5. Results of the test for heterogeneity in the level of nonfarm employment.

Variable	Current Farmland Scale	Willingness to Expand Farmland Scale
Nonfarm employment level × number of male offspring involved in agriculture	0.602 * (1.765)	−0.306 (−0.954)
Number of male offspring involved in agriculture	0.376 * (1.803)	0.520 ** (2.405)
Nonfarm employment level	−0.027 (−0.326)	−0.102 (−1.306)
Control variable	YES	YES
Constant term	0.794 (0.884)	0.421 (0.481)
Sigma_cons	1.465 *** (28.711)	—
F value	37.56	—
Chi-square test values (Wald chi-square values)	—	353.15
Prob > F or Prob > Chi2	0.000	0.000
Pseudo R2	0.154	0.200
Sample size	1347	1347

Note: *, **, and *** denote significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively.

for details). A possible explanation is that when a region has a high level of nonfarming employment options and farmers generally go out for nonfarm work, the arable land resources available for leasing are more abundant, which motivates households to expand the scale of farmland operations when they have successors.

4.4.2. Age Difference

There are significant differences in the degree of dependence on farmland and the urgency for family agricultural inheritance among farm household heads at different ages, and the scale expansion incentive effects of the probability of intergenerational inheritance are likewise significantly different. Therefore, at present, as the issue of aging becomes increasingly serious in China, exploring the effect of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by farmers of different ages not only provides an in-depth examination of the scale enhancement effect of agricultural inheritance, but also provides important empirical evidence for the formulation of policies to promote farmland scale management for farmers of different ages.

This study distinguishes older farmers (age of household head ≥ 60) and middle-aged farmers (40 ≤ age of household head ≤ 59) to examine the scale enhancement effect of intergenerational inheritance. The results show that first (see

Table 6. Regression results of the effect of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by farmers of different ages.

Variable	Current Farmland Scale		Willingness to Expand Farmland Scale
	40 ≤ Age of Head of Household ≤ 59	Age of Head of Household ≥ 60	40 ≤ Age of Head of Household ≤ 59	Age of Head of Household ≥ 60
Number of male offspring involved in agriculture	0.556 *** (2.764)	0.950 *** (5.579)	0.525 ** (2.459)	0.211 (1.424)
Control variable	YES	YES	YES	YES
Constant term	−2.127 (−1.475)	3.683 *** (2.938)	0.660 (0.522)	−1.930 (−1.167)
Sigma_cons	1.471 *** (23.780)	1.381 *** (22.012)	—	—
F value	40.78	21.04	—	—
Chi-square test values (Wald chi-square values)	—	—	118.02	91.71
Prob > F or Prob > Chi2	0.000	0.000	0.000	0.000
Pseudo R2	0.177	0.135	0.147	0.162
Sample size	644	703	644	703

Note: **, and *** denote significance at the 5%, and 1% levels, respectively.

for details), the probability of intergenerational inheritance positively and significantly affects the current scale of farmland for both groups of farmers, and the scale-up effect is larger for older farmers (regression coefficient of 0.950) than for middle-aged farmers (regression coefficient of 0.556). Second, the probability of intergenerational inheritance positively and significantly affects the willingness to expand the farmland operated by family only for the middle-aged farmers and not for the older farmers. A possible explanation is that the impact of intergenerational inheritance on agriculture arises well before the onset of succession and gradually weakens over time, as confirmed in the previous section. For elderly farmers, the scale-up effect of inheritance has already occurred and is weakening over time, resulting in a significant effect on current scale and a nonsignificant effect on expected scale expansion. However, for middle-aged farmers, who will become older farmers in the next 20 years, the effect of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by the family is positively triggered and stronger, is likely to persist for the next decade or more, and thus may have a significant effect on both dependent variables.

4.4.3. Scale Difference

Farmers operating different scales of farmland may differ significantly in their need for farmland expansion and difficulty in forming economies of scale, and, thus, the scale-enhancing effects of intergenerational inheritance on farmers with different scales of farmland may differ significantly. Therefore, this study further examines the distributional heterogeneity of farmland scale using quantile regressions.

Table 7. Quantile regression results of the effect of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by the family.

Variable	10% Quantile	50% Quantile	90% Quantile
Number of male offspring involved in agriculture	0.852 *** (0.097)	0.630 *** (0.130)	0.381 * (0.222)
Constant term	−0.000 (0.535)	1.611 ** (0.716)	0.426 (1.224)
Sample size	1347	1347	1347

Note: (1) *, **, and *** denote significance at the 10%, 5%, and 1% levels, respectively; (2) The reported results were obtained through regression using the scale of farmland operated by the family as the dependent variable, and only the estimated results of the core variables are reported.

corroborates the above analysis; as the scale of farmland operated by the family increases, the likelihood of agricultural inheritance has a significant positive effect on the scale of farmland operated by the family at the 10%, 50%, and 90% quantiles, but the coefficient of effect decreases as the quantile increases. This indicates that the probability of intergenerational inheritance has a stronger effect on the increase in household farmland size at low and medium scales. The reason for this is that farmers operating small-scale farmland have a stronger need for farmland expansion and are more likely to increase their current scale than farmers operating larger-scale farmland. The results also suggest that agricultural inheritance is conducive to increasing the average operating scale of farmland, and it is particularly effective in alleviating the problem of small-scale farmland management in rural China.

5. Conclusions and Policy Implications

Based on a theoretical framework considering the influence of intergenerational inheritance on the farmland operation scale of families, this study uses field survey data from three representative eastern provinces, namely, Liaoning, Jiangsu, and Jiangxi, to empirically test the influence of the probability of intergenerational inheritance on farmland operation scale in terms of the current scale of farmland operated by families and the willingness to expand the existing scale, and it further identifies the heterogeneity of the influence. The following conclusions can be drawn from the research: first, the intergenerational inheritance of agriculture can significantly increase the scale of farmland operated by the family, and the effect of the increase on the current scale of farmland operated by the family is significantly larger than that on the willingness to expand the current scale of farmland; second, the effect of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by the family has significant regional and distributional heterogeneity. The effect of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by the family is more pronounced in regions with frequent nonfarm activities and in households with low or medium levels of farmland operation scale; the promotion effect on current scale is larger for older farmers (head of household aged 60 and older) than for middle-aged farmers (40 ≤ age of the head of household ≤ 59), and the expected scale expansion effect mainly exists among middle-aged farmers.

According to the above findings, this study draws the following insights. First, under the new situation of firmly maintaining the basic agricultural operation system based on family contracting and vigorously promoting the scale of operation, the government should attract young talent with agricultural employment interest and skill advantages to agricultural employment to achieve the goals of optimizing the structure of the agricultural labor force, realizing the effective transmission of family agriculture and promoting the moderate-scale operation of agricultural land to solve the problem of small-scale farm operation in rural China. Second, under the realistic constraint of the deepening aging trend of the agricultural population, the government should continuously improve the rural social security system for elderly farmers without potential agricultural successors and guide them to withdraw from agricultural operation; for farmers with potential agricultural successors, especially middle-aged farmers (40 ≤ age of the head of household ≤ 59), and farmers in regions where nonagricultural activity is frequent or farmers whose families currently operate farmland at a small scale, the government can actively form a platform for farmland transfer; improve supporting services, such as registration and certification of farmland property rights, provision of transfer information, and services for procedures and dispute handling; and actively guide farmers to participate in farmland transfer and large-scale operation.

Finally, it should be noted that, first, this study examines only the static effects of agricultural intergenerational inheritance based on cross-sectional data from rural areas in eastern China and cannot fully identify the differences in the effects of intergenerational inheritance on the development of farmland scale operation in different parts of China or the possible changes in the effect over time. Therefore, it is necessary to use national-level panel data to further validate the main findings of this study and reveal the long-term dynamic effects of agricultural intergenerational inheritance. Second, although this study proposes the “retirement effect”, “investment recovery guarantee effect”, and “far-sightedness effect” of intergenerational inheritance of agriculture on the scale of farmland operated by the family, the econometric results reveal only the overall effect, and it is necessary to further explore the specific mechanisms and paths of intergenerational inheritance on the scale of farmland operated by families in rural China.